Environmental Psychology Working Group

Working group members:

• Marketa Braun Kohlová

• Sabine Pahl

• Wesley Schultz

• Jan Urban

The thematic area of Environmental Psychology encompasses studies of relations between people and their surroundings, with a view to the effects of the environment on people and the effects of people on the environment. Work in the area aims to develop theory and the base of evidence, often with a distinct concern for application. The emphasis of applied research in the area is upon enhancing people-environment relations in work, residential, leisure, transportation and other contexts by informing environmental protection, management and design efforts and by guiding behavioral change interventions. Such work seeks to promote positive relations between people and the environment, reflected for example in studies of restorative experience and place attachment. It also seeks to reduce harmful effects, whether those of the environment, as in natural disasters or in areas of concentrated poverty, or those that people inflict upon the environment, as seen with climate change and the accumulation of plastics in the oceans.

The thematic area of Environmental Psychology welcomes participation from researchers across the field of psychology, as well as those working in related disciplines and professions, such as anthropology, architecture, behavioral ecology, environmental sociology, ergonomics and landscape architecture. The area is methodologically eclectic, and the work presented may involve experiments or surveys as well as naturalistic observations and phenomenological approaches. The area covers a wide range of topics, those mentioned above as well many others, such as environmental aesthetics, environmental attitudes, environmental perception, environmental stress, human-wildlife relations, proxemics and way-finding.